Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! At Film Comment, Eric Hynes considers novel approaches to first-person filmmaking. In these films, the personal isn't just political - it's also pluralized. It's not that these new works are without precedent or breaking essentially new ground. Many of the most important first-person filmmakers have excelled at
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The recently concluded Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) in Melbourne featured both cutting-edge and enduring features of the lively Australian documentary business, which depends on government grants to the creative sector, commercial TV's bottomless appetite for reality, international markets and of course, sweat equity. For 30 years, the AIDC has been, as former director Heather Croall puts it, "the annual pilgrimage" for Australian documentary directors and for international programmers, distributors and marketers who work with them. (She was there with a new personal
The opening of Evgeny Afineevsky's Cries from Syria calls to mind a small, sad poem by the late Bill Knott: The only response to a child's grave is to lie down before it and play dead It is a heartfelt poem, one that speaks to the futility one feels when confronted with death, especially one so premature. It also speaks to the interior world of the imagination and the different ways that children and adults confront life's most basic and unavoidable transition. It would be much easier to write about Cries from Syria with this poetic filter in place, but as Afineevsky's latest documentary opens
One of the highlights of this year's FilmGate Interactive Media Festival (February 3-5 at the University of Miami School of Communication) was a panel titled "MIT Open Doc Lab Presents: Interactive and Non Linear Storytelling." It featured Beyza Boyacioglu, project manager at MIT Open Doc Lab (whose latest project, Zeki Müren Hotline, a "participatory telephone hotline and interactive web experience," premiered at IDFA DocLab and was nominated for a Digital Storytelling Award), and Doc Lab fellow Jeff Soyk (who was the UI/UX designer and architect on Elaine Sheldon's 2013 Peabody-winning
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) might not be the obvious place to go in search of documentary filmmaking. Doc-focused cousin International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) takes place only an hour away and less than two months before, meaning IFFR, a festival most renowned for experimental short film, isn't exactly overflowing with nonfiction. Its openness toward the outlier and the unconventional, however, makes it a terrific space for finding exemplary films that revel in the in-between and are fluid and flexible with the definition of documentary and what engaging
The International Documentary Association has announced the appointment of Claire Aguilar as the Director of Programming & Policy. Aguilar will oversee IDA's professional development, education, mentorship and training initiatives.
Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! The Guardian reports on a 1991 public information film that reveals how much Shell knew about global warming. Shell's 28-minute film, called Climate of Concern, was made for public viewing, particularly in schools and universities. It warned of extreme weather, floods, famines and climate refugees as fossil fuel
In the months leading up to the launch of the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, we couldn't have anticipated the national public debate that would emerge about (of all things!) facts. It's been shocking and disturbing to watch US leaders question the value and existence of facts and to put some of their most stalwart guardians—journalists, judges and scientists—on the defense. In the face of an all-out assault on the press, IDA is committed to standing behind the independent storytellers and watchdogs that make up our community—in large part, through the newly created Enterprise Documentary
Racial unrest at the University of Missouri in Columbia in fall 2015 led to national headlines, a threatened boycott by the football team and the resignation of the system president. It also immersed the inaugural class of the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism in the power and potential of long-form journalism. "It was a banner year," says Murray, founder of LA-based Bunim/Murray Productions. "Students convinced the Black Lives Matter group on campus to participate in cinema vérité on what was going on there. I was sitting in the audience when their documentary played at the
With the US Presidential Inauguration only a few days earlier, this year's Realscreen Summit was bound to hit on some related topics. After all, as one participant said, we helped create the reality star who became president. One panel in particular, "America: Getting the Whole Picture," was based on the idea that perhaps the stories between the coasts were being lost, or not explored. And is there a broader audience out there for producers to tap into? Are channels concerned about missing viewers, much like polls miscalculated voters? Participants in the session were from companies all over